It’s a pit because I know hapless kids are still being fed the same wrong dope. Examples:
Hottest part of the flame - ‘the blue part.’ This was already answered in a Cecil Adams column I think, but saying ‘blue’ is not always correct. What’s the hottest part of an all-blue propane stove flame then?
The Komodo Dragon IS a type of monitor lizard. [an obscure debate with a grade 3 teacher]
‘A spring demonstrates a metal’s elasticity’ - of course not! It demonstrates flexibility of the metal.
Movie radio communications that still end with ‘Over and Out.’ Sheesh.
The longbow doesn’t have a longer range than a winded crossbow. It’s just shot in a ballistic trajectory while a crossbow is almost always shot line-of-sight.
Believe it or not, even in 1968, my teacher told the class that a rocket ‘pushed’ against the air to gain its momentum. I got into real trouble by questioning this.
I hope that kids in singing & wind instrument classes these days are no longer taught to “support from the diaphragm” by making their abdominal muscles as hard as a board. Unnecessary, ineffective, and, most importantly, not the diaphragm.
I tend to be ultra wary of anyone I give my money to take care of. It’s a weird quirk, I know, but believe it or not, there are people out there who are trying to take advantage of you. I learned this when I was about 10.
There was a priest who taught religion class at my Catholic high school. One chapter in our lesson focused on relationships. Imagine a priest teaching high school students about relationships. He told us that we should always ask the girl if it’s okay to kiss them before doing so. Being the inexperienced young lad that I was, I always asked girls if I could kiss them. It turned out that the girls didn’t really like the fact that I would ask them to kiss them. I was told by them that it was a huge turn-off because it demonstrated a lack of confidence on my end.
The moral of the story is never take relationship advice from a priest.
Whales do have hair; it just isn’t that apparent, sort of like humans, but in a more advanced state of baldness. Or do you mean hair like humans have on their head (don’t recall if there was a cartoon or book with a whale with a head of hair)?
Neither are walnuts, brazil nuts, cashews, etc. There are a few true nuts, but the only ones most people have ever heard of as edible are hazelnuts/filberts, chestnuts, and pecans.
Thanks to past teachers, I always check the temperature by touching the flame with the back of my tongue, which everyone knows only tastes bitter. Bitter is uhh… kinda hot. Angling it back there is hard, though.
Not so much the fault of teachers, but the progress of science, but until recently they thought the komodo killed because its mouth was full of horrible bacteria, but, they insisted, are definitely not venomous. Now we know that they do have venom. Another: daddy long-legs (either the spider or opiliones) is the most. venomous. thing. EVAR. but it has tiny fangs, so you’re safe!
Oh, to expose my own ignorance, I also just learned that garter snakes are kinda venomous but not dangerous at all to humans.
I swear: I heard that pandas were officially not bears. Now I know that they are. I also heard a linkage to mustelids, but that might be just through the red panda.
Clarif: ‘whales have hair’ is a factual of mine, not a false dope from teachers.
We of course must distinguish between over-simplified kindergarten-level scientific explanations from the real bull-crap. An example of the former is ‘particles in the clouds grind against each other to create lightning and thunder.’ You forgive that kinder teacher as you get old. One for the latter is ‘dig too deep and you’ll reach hell.’
:dubious: I going to ask for a cite on that. If that were true there is no reason someone with a crossbow couldn’t tilt it up for greater range.
It wasn’t just that the longbow had a greater overall range either. Since it’s arrow was larger than a bolt it’s kinetic energy was greater at the point of impact so could punch though plate mail at far greater ranges. In the hands of a skilled archer a longbow’s rate of fire made it look like a Gatling gun compared to a crossbow. Crossbows won in the end for the same reason muskets did, you can train any clown to use one in a month or so, longbows take a lifetime and actual musculature and skeletal change in the user.